Lawmakers have found a new weapon in their quest to ban TikTok: linking the forced divestment bill, which passed the House last month, to aid packages for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Congress is expected to vote on the new legislation on Saturday.
Speaker Mike Johnson is leading the charge. He hopes Senators will be more inclined to vote on and pass the bill, which would force TikTok to find a new, non-Chinese owner or face a ban in the US, if they are under pressure to do so to secure foreign aid.
There are some signs that the aid-tied bill will have a better chance at Senate passage. Senator Maria Cantwell, the Commerce Committee chair, announced she supported the “updated” legislation due to the extension it grants TikTok to find a buyer (up to a year, compared to the original bill’s six month window). That revised timeline means the potential ban would only be enforced after the presidential election, though the platform’s status as a crucial election tool would be preserved throughout this campaign cycle.
However, the new version of the bill does nothing to assuage other concerns Senators have, including regarding the legislation’s constitutionality and whether it will hold up in court.
Johnson is attempting to advance the TikTok bill as the issue becomes an increasingly overt thorn in US-China relations. TikTok reportedly came up when President Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke on the phone earlier this month and the Chinese side brought up the TikTok bill in talks with Treasury Secretary Yellen during her recent trip to China.
The Chinese government has consistently condemned the TikTok bill on the grounds that it is unfair and anti-competitive. In March, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said the US has never found any evidence of national security threats posed by TikTok, but has persisted in efforts to ban it anyway.
“Resorting to hegemonic moves when one could not succeed in fair competition disrupts the normal operation of businesses, undermines the confidence of international investors in the investment environment, sabotages the normal economic and trade order in the world and will eventually backfire on the US itself,” he said.
Comments like Wang’s stop short of directly accusing US lawmakers of acting on anti-China bias. But there are signs that China’s official response to the bill may be changing. Yesterday, Politico reported that the Chinese Embassy held meetings with congressional staff in an attempt to lobby against the TikTok bill. In those meetings, embassy officials were reportedly unabashed about referring to TikTok as a “Chinese company” and in fact argued that the firm’s national origin is the only reason lawmakers are interested in banning it.
Until now, Beijing has tacitly endorsed TikTok’s strategy of denying that the company, which is headquartered in Singapore and the United States, has any connection to the Chinese government. TikTok remains committed to this line of defense; a spokesperson from the company told Politico it had no knowledge of any meetings with the Chinese embassy on the potential ban.
But if Politico’s sources are correct, Chinese officials’ implicit agreement with TikTok regarding its ownership and operation structure – including its self-initiated (and imperfect) attempt to keep American user data in the US under the name Project Texas – has made a complete 180. Rather than denying TikTok’s ties to China, officials are now attempting to use them as rationale for the proposed ban’s flaws.
Per Politico, the embassy “did not deny” the meetings were held. According to a statement from embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu, “This is not about lobbying for a single company but about whether all Chinese companies can be treated fairly.”
Liu’s comments suggest an awareness that while TikTok may be the first China-born digital export the US bans, it very well may not be the last. Retailers Shein and Temu have both faced scrutiny in the US, largely on the basis of forced labor allegations.
All this skepticism must be highly irksome for the Chinese government, which has encouraged its homegrown e-commerce and tech platforms to “go out” and reach international markets. At the Digital Silk Road Forum held earlier this week, officials praised Shein and Alibaba for their success abroad. They have “built efficient and collaborative platforms for trading across different countries and regions,” World Internet Conference (WIC) executive deputy secretary general Liang Hao said. He added that cross-border e-commerce is “now the new engine of economic growth.”
For Chinese tech companies, with success comes suspicion. US lawmakers are unlikely to retreat from their assault on TikTok, especially as the issue of minors’ use of social media gains political and social prominence. (Last month, Governor Ron DeSantis signed a law that prohibits children under 13 from making social media accounts and requires parental permission for 14 and 15 year-old users.)
For many lawmakers, the inclination to protect kids from addictive platforms is genuine. But Chinese officials’ accusations that China-affiliated apps are the subject of greater suspicion are also demonstrably true. As Mitch McConnell put it, “America’s greatest strategic rival is threatening our security right here on U.S. soil… in tens of millions of American homes. I’m speaking, of course, about TikTok.”
As we all wait for a final verdict on TikTok’s fate, America still has no data protection law in place. Non-Chinese tech companies continue to operate largely unregulated. And now, Ukraine’s access to much-needed assistance hinges on whether or not lawmakers endorse a ban on one particular, albeit popular, social media app.
While it’s encouraging to see leaders on the Hill are technically capable of bipartisan compromise, it is not difficult to imagine more urgent matters they could (and should) direct their attention to. Without the “China threat” label, however, it appears very little can grab and hold dual-aisle interest in our age of extreme political polarization.
